PC won't bootup - Blinking Cursor

[chardar]

Lats night i replace my heatsink with a bigger one because my cpu was running a little warmer than i liked. This is something i have done many times but obviously there is a chance that i may have damaged something although i doubt it.....

It booted up fine first time last night and everything was running super cool etc Job done.. Or so i thought.

This morning i tried to boot up to check my emails:

Post - Fine

Bios Screen - Fine

Black Screen with Flashing Cursor in Top Left.....

Rebooted, went into bios. No HDD detected.

I realise that my first port of call when i get home is to check the drive, make sure its plugged in properly and see if i can hear drive activity.

I just wanted to see what u guys thought? Could it be anything else?

Tried a windows disc and it didn't get far enough to boot from it, which i felt was strange as windows disc would boot with only a blank HDD installed, so why not boot with mine?

Any advice or comments would be appreciated, when i get home i prolly aint gonna have internet access as my PC aint working, so i wanna get a few ideas in my mind before i go home :)

Cheers

Edit: Should mention that when i changed the heatsink over i got a Warning: CPU Fan on bootup.

I physically checked the fan and it WAS working and the cpu was running very cool, so i pressed F1 to resume and it all seemed fine.

[barryt]

you must have disconnected the HD power or ide cable at any of the 2 sides, or made a other hd/cd swop while changing the heatsink
barry

[chardar]

Barry, yea that will be the first thing i will check when i get back, however i have a feeling thats not going to be the case.

It booted up fine once, leads don't generally come out by themselves......

Also why didn't i get a Failed to detect Hard Drive message?

[Rik_]

Cables can work loose. There are a lot of spinning parts inside a pc, it is quite possible that vibration has moved an already loose cable.

[chardar]

Well i definitely hope thats the case :)

still confused as to why there was no "Failed to Detect Hard Drive" message.

I have had hard drives fail before and that message always came up.

[Rik_]

I have experienced the problem on a few pc's in the past. Most were cured by pressing the cables home firmly. 1 required a new data cable. None required a new hard drive.

[chardar]

Yea as hoped, it was just a lose data cable :)

thanx for the support guys, just wanted to be sure what i needed to take home with me in the way of spares.

[Rik_]

Might be an idea to run scandisk on your drive, just to be on the safe side.